


Fading Every Night

by dragonlands



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/F, M/M, Pining, Post-Episode: s03e07 Digestivo, Pre-Red Dragon, Will misses Hannibal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-07 21:49:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10370244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonlands/pseuds/dragonlands
Summary: Post Digestivo where Will is married to Molly and starts regretting all his life choices while they're celebrating their six months anniversary. (Luckily we all know he'll get a second chance later)





	

**Author's Note:**

> I was feeling emotional over Hugh's comments about Will not realizing that Hannibal loved him and this happened.
> 
> Title is from Zayn's song drunk.

Will wasn't sure when he had expected it to begin. He wasn't even completely certain if he knew what the the 'it' was, beyond a change of some sort, a factor that would set the day it started and the time after apart from the dull and empty monotony before it. Something that would make him stop going over his last conversation with Hannibal, to make him stop wondering if he should've done things differently.

When Jack had taken Hannibal away, chained and restrained, he had felt like he would never stop reliving that moment, felt like he was looking at a part of himself being taken away in the car. _If I saw you every day, Will, I would remember this time._ Well, now _he_ did, he saw Hannibal smiling behind his eyelids, as if he were a normal person capable of human emotions beyond those concerning himself.

He fixed boat engines and cars, then went home and read the newest studies in psychology and high literature. He tried to make his life simple, but after Hannibal he couldn't do simple. He fixed everything else but his mind still remained broken, like it had been cracking apart for a long time.

It was different than when he had encephalitis. This time his mind wasn't on fire and he didn't feel the wrong kind of crazy. His brain felt like it had been stopped mid change, mid becoming.

When Molly had asked him out for a coffee, he still wasn't expecting to find a way out of his head. After a few dates, after playing football with Walter, after moving in together and getting married he had started to expect. He had hoped it was something that just happened with marriage, that suddenly he would stop feeling like a monster and start feeling like a man again.

His knife sunk too deep in the fish's belly, and its gall bladder broke. The meat was ruined. Suddenly, he felt a burst of anger towards the fish. He threw it away and heard the splash its landing created. His dogs ran to investigate what sort of sea monster it had been. He pressed his eyes closed for a minute before picking up another fish and starting all over again.

  
  


The food was in the oven when the sound of pawns clicking against the floor as the dogs ran to greet Molly and Walter could be heard. He shouted hello and they answered, something that was still hard for him to get used to. Molly walked to stand behind him, so close she was touching his back, and then wrapped her arms around his waist. He smiled.

"Is my food ready?" she asked.

"In a minute," he answered, placing his hands above hers. Her hands were a little smaller than his, soft and unscarred. They had never stolen a life, never pressed against the windpipe of a dying man. She couldn't imagine the mixture of adrenalin and endorphin, the rush of godlike power. Hopefully, she would never have to experience it.

"You're a good housewife," she said and kissed his neck. He laughed and leaned against her warmth for a moment before she let go of him and went to get the plates.

  
  


When the table was otherwise set and he was bringing a wine bottle he stopped, staring at their pitiful excuse of a fancy friday dinner. The crockery was plain white and lacked any elegance, the tablecloth didn't match the walls and the whole setup missed a centerpiece. The food smelled good, but it wasn't _beautiful_. He wasn't even sure why they were trying.

He ran his hand through Walter's hair when he passed him, and offered him a bright smile. He told him that the dinner was ready, and that he hoped to find him sitting at his chair when he came back from the bathroom. He nodded, as if he was his father, as if he was anyone's father at all and capable of such a traditional thing. As if he hadn't already failed twice.

He pressed the bathroom door gently closed, but treated the lock too roughly, almost breaking it. The tears in his eyes were threatening to spill over. The realization that he'd never dine with Hannibal again, that their game was truly over had hit him, and he was choking on it. This was it now, he had managed to build himself an average life with a wife and a son and dogs and he would be living this routine for the rest of his life.

_I want you to know exactly where I am, and where you can always find me._ Was Hannibal counting on him losing his mind, realizing that he was nothing without him? Because if that was the case the man was less intelligent than he'd thought - he had realized that a long time ago. He truly had wanted to run away with Hannibal, had wanted Hannibal to show him Italy. But he also wanted to survive, and how could he hand his life into the hands of someone who was ready to abandon him in a heartbeat?

He flushed the toilet without having used it and splashed cold water on his face. The towel felt rough against his skin, but maybe it was his own fault. He combed his hair, smiled to his reflection unconvincingly and stepped out. Walter ran to the table as he heard Will exit the bathroom, pretended that been waiting there the whole time. Molly glanzed at him fondly when she sat down.

"What are we having?" she asked as Will removed the cover and sat down.

"Pesce persico al forno con arcancia," he answered, hearing the echo of all the times Hannibal had introduced a food.

"I didn't understand a word but sounds delicious," she said. He lifted one fillet on her plate, then on Walter's and lastly on his own.

"It just means that the perch is baked with orange," he said. "Found the recipe from google."

"What an uomo universale my husband is," she said, then tasted the food. "Mmm, this is delicious, I didn't know you were such a good cook."

"It was a good recipe. And I did spend a few years in and out of a master chef's table." Will said it before he could think better of it, but the moment it left his mouth he wished he would take it back. Walter continued eating but Molly stared at him. "Sorry. It was a bad joke. Walter, how was your day?"

The discussion went on from that, they finished eating, opened a new bottle of wine and watched a movie. After that was Walter's bedtime. Molly kissed him goodnight, but when he left the room her expression turned serious.

"Hannibal Lecter was on the news today," she said. "He has published another article."

Will swirled the red liquid around his glass. It didn't taste like wine, not after drinking Hannibal's expensive wines for years. He never drank red wine by himself, but Molly liked it and he had thought it would be a nice gesture to buy a few bottles for their six months anniversary. Now he was regretting the decision, but he drained the rest of the wine down his throat and poured himself another glass.

"I know," he said. "I read it. It was good."

Molly placed her hand on his thigh, and for a second he had to resist the urge to flinch away. "Will, we don't need to talk about this ever again if you don't want to, but I know almost nothing of your past outside of what I've seen on magazines."

"Do you read Tattle Crime?" he asked, and leaned his head back. He continued before she could answer, or maybe she wasn't even going to. "Freddie once called us Murder Husbands. I'm still not entirely sure what she was suggesting."

"I haven't read that particular article," she said.

"You should," he said. "It's funny."

"What was it like? Finding out that he-" she couldn't finish the sentence. He took another sip of wine, and imagined what Hannibal's face would look like if he tasted it. A nearly unnoticeable scrunch of his nose, pushing the glass away. Actually, he wouldn't even need to taste it, the smell would be enough throw him off. He remembered what the food was like at the BSHCI, and felt a sting of sympathy for the culinarist.

"That he'd been feeding us human flesh?" he asked and she nodded, her face not quite being able to settle either for disgust or interest, like she'd only just realized that her husband was a cannibal. "It was the least thing I was worried of at the moment. I wanted to catch him so I couldn't afford considering how disgusted I sould've been. He was a good cook."

"No, I meant emotionally," she said. She had moved her arm to his shoulder, but when Will brought his glass closer to his mouth she snatched it from his hand and placed it to the coffee table. Once he had wished to have this with Alana. Now, they both had a wife and a son. He hoped her marriage was better than his. She and Margot had fought together for a cause, killed together. They already shared more than he ever could share with Molly. "He was your friend wasn't he? How did the betrayal feel?"

"Interesting," he said, crossing his legs and then unfolding them again.

"What is?" she asked.

"I never thought of it as a betrayal," he said. "Probably should've. But the moment I found out it just felt like an inseparable part of him. I don't know how to tell the man who hosted dinner parties for the elite and the serial killer apart."

"How could you live with it? Having dinners with him, knowing what he was, knowing what you were eating? Did the thought that you were doing the right thing help?"

"Why are we havig this conversation?" he asked. "I love you. Let me have my wine glass back."

" I never questioned your love. Are we having two entirely different conversations here?" she asked. "You don't like wine."

"Hannibal's wine was drinkable." Winston was sniffing his feet, looking for some missing piece of food. Will scratched his ear. He had tasted Hannibal's food, he probably missed it too. He understood Will. "Winston once ate a man's face. The man tried to steal mine as revenge."

"Why are you telling me this?" she asked. She'd retreated the hand that she'd reached towards Winston.

"I'm not the only one who's eaten people in this house," he said and grinned. She seemed disgusted, but not scared.

"Stop being an idiot," she said, sighing.

"You wanted to have this conversation." He couldn't entirely restore the way Hannibal looked to his mind. He remembered the cheekbones, the eyes that had seemed dead so often yet had shone with emotion when he'd whispered _I let you see me, know me_. But there was things missing, like the exact way Hannibal's hair fell on his forehead in the morning or in a fight. Or the exact line of his jaw. He blinked his eyes multiple times to get rid of the blur, but the picture disappeared entirely.

"I wanted to know what your relationship was with Hannibal Lecter," she asked, as if it was a question you could just as like that. Like asking for the time.

"Complicated."

"He tried to kill you."

"Debatable." Her eyes flickered, like a warning, but there was unsureness in them. This wasn't the man she had married. The man she had married was the same one that Alana had refused years ago, but entirely different from the one that Hannibal had seen in him. Or maybe not entirely - they both read the same books, enjoyed the same smells and liked dogs. Maybe the difference was less like the one between black and white and more like the one between two sides of the same coin.

"You followed him to Italy."

"That's true," he said and nodded. He wished she'd let him drink more so that he could say stupid things about those times and blame it all on alcohol. "Hannibal was my friend, and he was a serial killer, and he killed people I cared about. I needed to catch him."

"Why were you so special?" she asked.

"Why did you marry me if you think I'm not?" He smiled playfully, but she didn't return the smile. He wanted to go back to pretending they were a normal couple living a normal life. He wanted to leave the room and blame it on migraine.

"Special to a serial killer."

"I could assume his point of view. I could understand him. And my brain was fun to mess with."

She nodded. "Fair enough." Her hand was back on his tight, and he wanted to tell her to stop. Not because he didn't enjoy what she was doing, but because his mind was still filled with Hannibal. He didn't.

Her mouth tasted like the cheap wine just like his. "Can you believe it's been six months since I forced you to go out with me?" she asked as they parted to catch their breath. He smiled at how easily she dropped their earlier subject. To her, it was something that happened to someone else somewhere far away. He envied her for that.

"You didn't exactly force me," he said and pressed a small kiss on her lips. "It's not like you drove here after the first time we met to have breakfast with me."

She laughed as she opened the buttons of his shirt. For a moment he felt like he was hallucinating again, her fingers seemed longer, her palms more scarred. He shook the thought away. "That would've been a bit too upfront even from me. You were afraid of commitment."

"I'd just had a lot to deal with. I wasn't afraid of committing." _I was already committed to someone else, in a way that can't be replaced by marriage papers_ , he thought. Molly ran her fingers over the scar on his stomach, not understanding that it wasn't a battlescar but a mark of ownership. No matter how hard she would press their bodies together, Hannibal had always pressed harder.

"People aren't afraid of the action but the possible consequence," she said, studying his expression. "Loving is easy. Facing rejection is not."

"People react to rejection in different ways," he said, thinking about Hannibal's hand in his neck after he had thrust the knife in. Hannibal cared about him, the hurt in his eyes had been genuine and his grasp of him had been gentle. He had been ready to forgive him in Italy, but for how long? Until he would cross the line by doing something unforgivably rude? Until he would grow bored? Until he would find another? "I wasn't afraid you'd reject me."

"You don't need to be afraid with me." Her voice was fierce. If she wanted to burn his past out of him she shoud've picked someone else to marry.

"Does it feel like im afraid?" he smirked, and pressed closer.

She pushed him on his back, but his head hit the wineglass which fell to the ground and the wine spilled. The rug looked like someone had been killed at that place.

"Oh shit," she said and jumped off him and ran to the kitchen to get cleaning supplies. He was laughing. He wondered what Hannibal would think about the symbolism.

**Author's Note:**

> leave kudos and comments and my Twitter is @surfingljp and my tumblr is dragonlands come and say hello


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